Samantha Power, Barack Obama’s former senior foreign policy advisor, has taken a position in Obama’s State Department transition team, though it is remains unclear if Powers will get a permanent position in the department, reports the AP.

After joining Team Hope, Men’s Vogue gratuitously characterized Power as a “Harvard brainiac who can boast both a Pulitzer Prize and a mean jump shot (ask George Clooney).” Power, a Pulitzer Prize winning, Yale-graduate-turned-Harvard-professor, earned public notoriety after famously branding Senator Clinton a “monster” in an “off the record” comment with Scotsman in the 2008 Democratic primaries. “You look at her and think, ‘Ergh’,” she told the Scottish newspaper, adding, “The amount of deceit she has put forward is really unattractive.” Hillary Clinton, to say the least, was not pleased with the Obama campaign’s “message of hope and post-partisanship” via character assassination and attack politics. The next day, Power resigned from the campaign.

Obama’s decision to tap Power for the State Department – an agency rumored to be led by Senator Clinton – underlines something we’ve already known about Obama: He’s ambitious, and doesn’t care whose fingers, toes, and faces (and former opponents) he steps on to get the job done. Power’s viscous, personal attacks have long-since faded into the annals of campaigning, at least in Obama’s mind, but I doubt former First Lady Hillary Clinton views the consummate coastal elite as rehabilitated.

Huffington Post reports an official with intimate knowledge of the Obama transition said Power had “made a gesture to bury the hatchet” with the ole monster. So either Ms. Power believes Senator Clinton’s ‘deceitful’ streak has ended, or she’s just desperate to make President-elect Obama look like an incautious ass again. Either way, this appointment (and her acceptance with the knowledge of Clinton’s possible leadership) is confusing.

Power is indeed a frighteningly accomplished academic and author, but I suspect, if Senator Clinton has any say in the matter, her appointment to the State Department will have a termination date of January 20, 2008.

UPDATE: Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey has more thoughts on the Clinton, Powers combo.